“Not so fast, my friend,” said the suspicious old follower of Fouche —­“not so fast; it is but right the maire should see you in the disguise you attempted your escape in.  It must be especially mentioned in the proces verbal.”

“Well, this is becoming too ludicrous,” said I.  “It need not take five minutes to satisfy you why, how, and where, I put on these confounded rags—­”

“Then tell it to the maire, at the Bureau.”

“But for that purpose it is not necessary I should be conducted through the streets in broad day, to be laughed at.  No, positively, I’ll not go.  In my own dress I’ll accompany you with pleasure.”

“Victor, Henri, Guillame,” said the gen-d’arme, addressing his companions, who immediately closed round me.  “You see,” added he, “there is no use in resisting.”

Need I recount my own shame and ineffable disgrace?  Alas! it is too, too true.  Harry Lorrequer—­whom Stultze entreated to wear his coats, the ornament of Hyde Park, the last appeal in dress, fashion, and equipage—­was obliged to parade through the mob of a market-town in France, with four gens-d’armes for his companions, and he himself habited in a mongrel character—­half postillion, half Delaware Indian.  The incessant yells of laughter—­the screams of the children, and the outpouring of every species of sarcasm and ridicule, at my expense, were not all—­for, as I emerged from the porte-chochere I saw Isabella in the window:  her eyes were red with weeping; but no sooner had she beheld me, than she broke out into a fit of laughter that was audible even in the street.

Rage had now taken such a hold upon me, that I forgot my ridiculous appearance in my thirst for vengeance.  I marched on through the grinning crowd, with the step of a martyr.  I suppose my heroic bearing and warlike deportment must have heightened the drollery of the scene; for the devils only laughed the more.  The bureau of the maire could not contain one-tenth of the anxious and curious individuals who thronged the entrance, and for about twenty minutes the whole efforts of the gens-d’armes were little enough to keep order and maintain silence.  At length the maire made his appearance, and accustomed as he had been for a long life to scenes of an absurd and extraordinary nature, yet the ridicule of my look and costume was too much, and he laughed outright.  This was of course the signal for renewed mirth for the crowd, while those without doors, infected by the example, took up the jest, and I had the pleasure of a short calculation, a la Babbage, of how many maxillary jaws were at that same moment wagging at my expense.

However, the examination commenced; and I at length obtained an opportunity of explaining under what circumstances I had left my room, and how and why I had been induced to don this confounded cause of all my misery.

“This may be very true,” said the mayor, “as it is very plausible; if you have evidence to prove what you have stated—­”